The Flaming Lips will release their first-ever live album, “The Soft Bulletin Recorded Live at Red Rocks with the Colorado Symphony Orchestra”, November 29th via Warner Records. The album features the band’s 2016 live performance of the band’s seminal 1999 effort “The Soft Bulletin”, which celebrates its 20th anniversary this year.
The concert was produced by the Flaming Lips, Scott Booker and their long-time collaborator Dave Fridmann, and recorded with the Colorado Symphony Orchestra at Red Rocks in Morrison, Colorado. The concert features a 68-piece orchestra and a 57-person choir conducted by Andre De Ridder.
The Spark That Bled from the new album ‘The Soft Bulletin:Music and Songs by The Flaming Lips featuring the Colorado Symphony with conductor André de Ridder’.
The album will be released in all formats as a double vinyl album, CD and digital. It is available for preorder now, with all preorders including an instant download of album cut “Race for the Prize” (which is also available via the band’s YouTube channel).
Dublin’s Silverbacks have dropped their new single, ‘Sirens’, out via Nice Swan Records, with the limited edition AA 7″ dropping on January 31st 2020.
Produced by Girl Band basssist Daniel Fox, the lushly recorded propulsive rhythm section prompts a visceral response from the three guitarists who weave fuzz-laden riffs, and spindly post-punk riffs into the mix, while vocally switching from semi-spoken nonchalance to unabashedly catchy glam punk melodies.
In ‘Sirens’, the narrator misses riots and important protests taking place in his city because he’s too preoccupied with writing the perfect soundtrack for what is happening,” says singer Daniel O’Kelly. “He’s equally distracted by his relationship issues, tennis, and his obsession with his favourite band.”
Specializing in the live dissemination and recording of sitarified and psychedelified musical compositions.
Debuting a decade ago, the psych-pop creation of Rishi Dhir along with long-time collaborators Miles Dupire (drums) and Robbie MacArthur (guitar), and touring member Jason Kent (keys/guitar), have released five critically-acclaimed albums, toured extensively throughout North America and Europe, been nominated for the prestigious Polaris Music Prize and picked up praise from the likes of NPR, Brooklyn Vegan, Consequence of Sound, Rolling Stone, Clash Magazine and more. As a highly-regarded sitar player, Dhir has also collaborated with indie-rock icons (Beck) and legendary cult bands (The Brian Jonestown Massacre).
Part 2: Darker Time, Darker Space We can’t believe what is happening. We don’t know what to do. Scientists reveal they have built a spaceship that can take the top candidates for continuing humanity to New Earth. We’ve never been there, but we have heard transmissions that suggest life exists like ours. Who are the lucky ones that get to board starship Harmonia for planet B?
Band Members
Rishi Dhir,
Miles Dupire,
Jason Kent,
Robbie MacArthur,
Following the premature death of Little Feat’s chief architect Lowell George from a cocaine-charged heart attack, Paul Barrere stepped into the role of the band’s primary guitar slinger.
Indeed, it was no small challenge considering that George’s formidable presence as singer, songwriter and lead guitarist had imbued such an indelible mark on the band’s overall identity. Yet even at the outset, Barrere managed to accomplish that ,feat which enabled the band to continue and not only survive, but actually thrive in the aftermath of George’s passing.
Not that Little Feat always got their due, while certain albums are rightfully now remembered as genuine American classics “Sailin’ Shoes, Dixie Chicken, Time Loves a Hero”, and “Feats Don’t Fail Me Now” in particular — other efforts are inexplicably overlooked.
With PaulBarrere’s recent passing, it was an apt time to shine the light back on those Little Feat recordings that are well worthy of more recognition, All add emphasis to a powerful legacy, one that belongs to Barrere as much as it does to the other band members overall.
Little Feat(1971)
Offering the first hints of Little Feat’s trademark sound — a combination of greasy funk, sturdy R&B, primal rock, and a crisp country croon, Little Feat is often overlooked whenever pundits retrace the band’s trajectory. Yet it was a stirring first step, one that demonstrated all the verve and versatility that they would become known for a short time later. Several songs stand out — the spunky “Strawberry Flats,” the tender “Truck Stop Girl” and the gutbucket read of the blues standards “Forty-Four Blues” and “How Many More Years” in particular — but no one track in the whole of their canon is as enduring Lowell George’s classic “Willin’,” a definitive road song that would become one of the most covered offerings of their classic catalog. With George’s shimmering bottleneck guitar at the fore, it’s a sparse read, but one that defines the group as much as any other.
The Last Record Album(1975)
Although given a somewhat curious title that the unsuspecting might have misinterpreted as a death knell, The Last Record Album showed the band was nevertheless in fine form. Here again, the band’s songwriting prowess was well represented by the supple and seductive “All That You Dream,” a co-composition from Barrere and keyboardist Bill Payne, George’s sobering and sensitive “Long Distance Love” and the various examples of Feat’s solid pacing and assertive rhythms — “Down Below the Borderline,” “One Love Stand” and “Day or Night.” Although it’s only eight songs long, it’s as definitive an album as any in their classic catalog.
Hoy Hoy (1981)
An odds and sods collection released two years after the band’s initial break-up in 1979, “Hoy Hoy” isn’t so much an encapsulation as it is a reminder of the band’s extraordinary diversity. Although Little Feat has had ample live albums released throughout their lengthy tenure, Hoy Hoy is far more than a concert collection given the fact that it also includes outtakes, demos and various quirky covers. A handful of songs come from earlier albums, but this is hardly a true anthology given its array of otherwise obscure offerings. Nevertheless, it deserves inclusion in any true Feat fan’s collection, simply by virtue of the fact it boasts so many interesting and otherwise unavailable selections.
Let It Roll (1988)
The first studio album issued in the aftermath of Lowell George’s untimely passing, this was the first to feature Craig Fuller, George’s tentative replacement, and guitarist Fred Tackett, who would remain a mainstay in the years to come. Fuller–a veteran of Pure Prairie League and a handful of ad hoc collaborations–wrote eight of the album’s ten tracks, not only a bold move by a new member attempting to fill such massive shoes, but also a clear sign of the confidence given him by his new compadres. They were all well rewarded; indeed, the music retains the upbeat, effusive sound that characterized the classic Feat albums early on. George Massenburg and Bill Payne’s co-production efforts substitute a bit of polish for the down home designs that marked their earlier efforts, but it’s never a deterrent. In fact, it serves to remind the fan faithful that even despite the loss of the seemingly irreplaceable Lowell George, Feats were still clearly capable of moving forward without fear of faltering .
Under the Radar (1998)
Marking the tenth anniversary of Little Feat’s reconvening in 1988, the then-current line up that included Barrere, Tackett, Payne, percussionist Sam Clayton, bassist Kenny Gradney, drummer Richie Hayward, and recent arrival and dominant force, vocalist Shaun Murphy, proved themselves to be as formidable as ever. Although their profile had diminished considerably in later years, it was clear that the band were as determined as ever to retain their potent presence. While several songs boasted Feat’s signature spunk and spirit, other offerings — “Eden’s Wall,”“Under the Radar,” “Vale of Tears,” and “A Distant Thunder” in particular — demonstrated a marked maturity in their delivery, one that promised, for better or worse, to bring them closer to the mainstream. Although it can’t exactly be called an extraordinary album, Under the Radar is a credible effort regardless and a sign that even in their new incarnation, Little Feat was worthy being called an American classic.
At 18, Nilüfer – who is of Turkish – Irish – Bajan heritage – uploaded a few demo’s to SoundCloud. Though she’s preternaturally shy, her music – which uniquely blends elements of soul and jazz into intimate pop songs with electronic flourishes and a newly expressed grungy guitar sound – isn’t. And it didn’t take long for it to catch people’s attention. She signed with independent New York label ATO Records, following three EPs on esteemed london indie label Blue Flowers, and earned a place on the BBC Sound of 2018 longlist.
She has also supported the likes of The xx, Interpol, Broken Social Scene and Mitski on tour. Now, Nilüfer releases her debut album, “Miss Universe”. Though she recorded much of it in the same remote Cornwall studio she used to jam in as a much younger person, it is bigger and more ambitious than anything she has done before. Angels, with its muted, harmonic riffs, channels ideas “of paranoid thoughts and anxiety” – a theme that runs through the album, not least in its conceptual spoken word interludes which emanate from a fictional health management company WWAY HEALT H TM. “You sign up, and you pay a fee,” explains Nilüfer of the automated messages, which are littered through the album and are narrated by the titular Miss Universe. “They sort out all of your dietary requirements, and then they move onto medication, and then maybe you can get a better organ or something… and then suddenly it starts to get a bit weird. You’re giving them more of you and to what end?
Nilüfer Yanya performs “In Your Head” on Later… with Jools Holland, BBC Two
Eagles bassist Timothy B. Schmit has released a new song titled “The Good Fight” that features Sheryl Crow.
The track runs nearly eight minutes. Schmit didn’t reveal whether the release is connected to an upcoming album. “I recorded a new song, “The Good Fight,” with my friend Sheryl Crow,” he said. “There couldn’t be any better time than right now to release this.”
If there’s an LP on the way, it will be his seventh solo work, and first since 2016’s Leap of Faith.
Speaking in 2017 about his attitude toward songwriting, Schmit said that “there’s less time in front of me now than there is behind me, and I do think about my mortality a lot more. It’s those age-old questions, and I just try and put them into some kind of song form and hope that it resonates with others.”
He said with Eagles that he thinks “the friction was part of the creativity. I’m sure it was. … I was the guy just trying to make things okay. I did what I can to keep the peace. Sometimes there’s not much you could do with outside situations, and you just have to go with it.”
Earlier this year, Crow also collaborated with Schmit’s Eagles bandmate Joe Walsh, bringing him in for her song “Still the Good Old Days,” which is featured on Threads, a duets album with other big names.
“Many of these people, I owned their records when I was seven and eight years old,” she said. “Who would have thought a young girl from a tiny town in Missouri would wind up working with these people and having relationships with them?
Timothy B. Schmit’s new song “The Good Fight” with Sheryl Crow Available Now
Produced and recorded by Ripley Johnson (Wooden Shjips, Moon Duo), and mixed by Chris Cohen (Captured Tracks, Deerhoof), the album finds its niche in the hazy sonic landscape of private press country and psych records, and alongside artists like Relatively Clean Rivers, Jim Sullivan, Kenny Knight, and countless other explorers of the pastoral underground.
The band was aiming to capture a timeless, natural sound, not quite of the present, past, or future, but phasing in between the consciousness of now and the stoned dream-state of the eternal. Sort of a back porch jam just as the shrooms are starting to kick in. Handmade and human, but also cosmic and transcendental. The goal is to let the music speak for itself and hopefully find a weird and wonderful audience somewhere out there.
Rose City Band cling to the notion that they’re trying to find peace, perhaps even salvation through their songs, all delivered with a beautiful sense of melancholy and endless euphoria.
Folk rock with a Moon Duo infusion creating a dreamy soundscape that grips the listener and carries them away.
Traveling down the same mellow cosmic path as Wooden Shjips, yet with a bit more structure and the feel of rambling 70’s stoner rock, Rose City Band amble on in with a brilliant new offering of intoxicating slow-motion songs that drip like golden amber in the morning sun, warm and comfortable, never straying from their simple melodies of pastoral delight.
We recorded ‘Nova’ while making Violet Street with every intention of putting it on the album. At the very last moment we took it off, but are happy to set it free now. It’s about the haze that surrounds you when you first fall in love, the all consuming fantasy of it. The recording was a prime example of the wild processes we undertook with our producer Shawn Everett.
Like a mad scientist, Shawn spliced together moments of us jamming live as a full band inside his warehouse and the sound of smashing beer bottles into a trashcan. We edited all of it to sync up with the scene in Interstellar where Matthew McConaughey goes inside a black hole. With that scene being too long, we ultimately edited it to sync up with Playboi Carti’s music video for “Location.”
“Nova” by Local Natives, the one-off a-side single from the LP4 “Violet Street” sessions
New outing from Manc faves, Icecapades and it’s a corker. a trio of talented folks who I don’t know smash out a brilliantly wry, cleverly placed set of off-kilter snarling college rock and Blue Album era melodies with skill and grace.
The first album from Manchester band Hot Shorts in two years. ‘I Understand And I Wish To Continue’ is a peppy sophomore album which ably follows on from where the band’s excellent 2017 self-titled debut album left us. It’s twenty nine minutes of cascading hook-laden pop precision from one of the city’s finest breakout bands of recent times. An assured and engaging affair, the record is ten tracks of 90’s tinged slacker anthems and the occasional luxury indie lament, deftly arranged and crafted by the band over the last two years.
Unsurprisingly for a band featuring two published authors the lyrics on this album take centre stage. Songs like Lostprophets Tattoo, Don’t Stop Me If You’ve Heard This One Before, and I Found Youon Myspace are keenly observed vignettes which blend knowing pop cult humour, keen social observations and the occasional dollop of self introspection. It’s a wonderful, lyrically savvy album, designed to leave the listener feeling
amused, discerning and invited firmly in on the joke.
Chris says of the writing on the record, “Pretty much all of the songs are either about feeling really old and embarrassing and/or music from my past…the songs are mostly.. about being slightly too old and British to still be into 90s alt rock as much as we are, but there is also one about being afraid to go to space on there and also one about a cat”.
Bruce Springsteen released hisWestern Stars album in June, and in September, Little Steven Van Zandt became the first E Street Band member to perform one of its songs, live, singing “Tucson Train” at a show with his Disciples of Soul band at Tucson’s Rialto Theatre. Van Zandt and the Disciples of Soul have performed the song at other shows since then, too, and have now released a live version as a single. You can listen to it below.
It’s a somewhat different interpretation of the song from Springsteen’s. While “Tucson Train” is one of the most optimistic songs on Western Stars, Springsteen still sounds a bit world-weary and restrained on it. Buoyed by his big Disciples of Soul band, and especially its powerful horn section, Van Zandt’s version is more exuberant.
Springsteen released “Tucson Train” on his 2019 album, Western Stars. It was also released as the album’s second single, two weeks before the album itself came out.
“Tucson Train” is No. 14 on NJArts.net’s list of the Top 70 Springsteen songs of the last 30 years (the second highest-ranking Western Stars song, after “Moonlight Motel”.
